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Travelers check in for American Airlines Inc. flights at Los Angeles International Airport during the Thanksgiving 2013 travel period. LAX isn't just a hub for American. It's also one of the six busiest airport hubs in the nation. Along with Atlanta-Hartsfield, Chicago O'Hare, Dallas/Fort Worth, Denver, and Charlotte, these select hubs accounted for 25 percent of the nation's annual enplanements in 2012.

Word leaked out last week that United Continental Holdings (NYSE: UAL) would cut its flight nexus in Cleveland, "de-hubbing" the Ohio city that for decades played host to both pre-merger United Airlines and pre-merger Continental Airlines.

But chances are you missed the news because you were otherwise engaged, desperately trying to rebuild your travel schedule as delays and cancellations mounted during this seemingly endless winter.

United's decision to reduce flights in Cleveland by 60 percent during the next few months is no surprise—chief executive Jeff Smisek claimed the operation "hasn't been profitable for over a decade"—but you may be shocked to realize there's a connection between bad weather and airline hubs.

Simply put: the more hubs that airlines close, the harder is it for us to get around when the weather stinks.

"Bad-weather ops are all about options and alternatives," a major carrier's scheduling wizard told me last week as storms in the Midwest and Northeast caused more than 11,000 flight cancellations and 40,000 delays. "Every time an airline de-hubs an airport, that's one less place you can reroute passengers when Mother Nature isn't cooperating."

As you surely have experienced, Mother Nature has not cooperated with business travelers lately. In December, FlightStats.com recorded 23,000 cancellations and more than 225,000 delays. On-time operation dropped to 70 percent compared to 83.44 percent in November, 2013. January was even worse. The aviation-data service MasFlight says the nation's airlines scrubbed 49,000 flights and there were more than 300,000 delays.

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